Saturday, September 21, 2013

Life Discovered In Stratosphere, Are Alien Life Forms Coming In To Earth's Atmosphere?

The team, led by the University of Sheffield, found small organisms that could have come from space after sending a specially designed balloon to 27 km into the stratosphere during the recent Perseid meteor shower.

"Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27 km," said Professor Milton Wainwright from the University's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.

"The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.

"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.

"Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here," he said.

"If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution. New textbooks will have to be written!" Wainwright said.

The balloon, designed by Chris Rose and Alex Baker from the University of Sheffield's Leonardo Centre for Tribology, was launched near Chester and carried microscope studs which were only exposed to the atmosphere when the balloon reached heights of between 22 and 27 km.

The balloon landed safely and intact near Wakefield. The scientists then discovered that they had captured a diatom fragment and some unusual biological entities from the stratosphere, all of which are too large to have come from Earth.

Wainwright said stringent precautions had been taken against the possibility of contamination during sampling and processing, and said the group was confident that the biological organisms could only have come from the stratosphere.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Cosmology.

Wainwright's team is hoping to extend and confirm their results by carrying out the test again in October to coincide with the upcoming Haley's Comet-associated meteorite shower when there will be large amounts of cosmic dust.

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- Unknown Updated at: Saturday, September 21, 2013

Monday, September 9, 2013

Cyber Crime First Mobile Trojan Botnets Spreading

PUNE: For the first time in the history of mobile cybercrime, a trojan is being spread using botnets controlled by other criminal groups, said a statement issued by the Kaspersky lab.

Over the last three months analysts have been investigating how the 'Obad.a' trojan, a malicious app for Android, is distributed. The criminals behind the trojan have adopted a new technique to spread their malware. It has also become clear that Obad.a is mostly found in CIS countries.

In total, 83% of attempted infections were recorded in Russia, while it was also detected on mobile devices in Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

The most interesting distribution model saw various versions of Obad.a spread with Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Opfake.a. This double infection attempt starts with a text message to users, urging them to download a recently received text message. If the victim clicks the link, a file containing Opfake.a is automatically downloaded onto the smartphone or tablet, the statement said.

The malicious file can only be installed if the user then launches it; should that happen, the trojan sends further messages to all the contacts on the newly infected device. Clicking the link in these messages downloads Obad.a. It's a well-organized system: one Russian mobile network provider reported more than 600 messages containing these links within just five hours, pointing to a mass distribution. In most cases the malware was spread using devices that were already infected.

Apart from using mobile botnets, this highly complex trojan is also distributed by spam messages. This is a major carrier of the Obad.a trojan. Typically a message warning the user of unpaid 'debts' lures victims to follow a link which automatically downloads Obad.a onto the mobile device. Again, though, users must run the downloaded file in order to install the Trojan, the statement said.

"In three months we discovered 12 versions of Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a. All of them had the same function set and a high level of code obfuscation, and each used an Android OS vulnerability that gives the malware DeviceAdministrator rights and made it much more difficult to delete. As soon as we discovered this, we informed Google and the loophole has been closed in Android 4.3. However, only a few new smartphones and tablets run this version, and older devices running earlier versions are still under threat. Obad.a, which uses a large number of unpublished vulnerabilities, is more like Windows malware than other Trojans for Android," said an antivirus expert at the lab.

Shared From Times Of India